Quality Education Conference Engages Critical Reform Issues
June 14, 2006

On June 5th and 6th, 2006, at the National Access Network's sixth annual conference, Wendy Puriefoy, president of the Public Education Network, and Rachel Tompkins, president of the Rural School and Community Trust, welcomed participants as their organizations co-sponsored the conference, “Schools for Our Future: Ensuring Quality Education for All Children.” The conference was also co-sponsored by the Education Law Center, which invited Monday's luncheon speaker, retired New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein. On Monday, Wendy Puriefoy welcomed participants with a challenge to reinvigorate “the habit of quality public education” across the nation. In fact, the very status of our society as free and democratic depends upon educating youth as citizens, she stated. In order to accomplish the needed reforms, she emphasized the need to reach legislators through constituents and the importance of public engagement.

Rachel Tompkins welcomed the audience at the start of the second day. She reminded participants that advocates must be effective and well-organized to create school reform. While she cautioned that the same solutions do not apply everywhere, she encouraged rural advocates and urbanites to partner for real change.

During the two days, participants from 38 states and the District of Columbia gathered in Washington, D.C. and engaged in exciting discussions about real-world successes, holding public officials accountable, communications strategies, quality education as a civil right, and more. To learn more about specific sessions, see Partnerships Between Litigators and Organizers, Debating NCLB Reauthorization, and Exploring the Right to Education, Keys to Success, After-School, and Teaching Quality.

Michael Rebell, executive director of The Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, opened the conference with remarks on “Comprehensive Educational Equity: Framing an Agenda for Success in Challenging Times.” He encouraged the audience to continue to be a driving force for implementing standards-based reform and ensuring that hard-won funding is well-spent for student achievement. Most of all, he reminded participants to clarify and broadcast the message that all students can learn and have a right to equal access to comprehensive educational opportunity.

The morning concluded with the traditional Round-up from the States, led by National Access Network director Molly Hunter. A representative from each of 38 states and the District of Columbia shared the main events in her state the past year.

The conference emphasized communications in a plenary session, “Strengthening Communications to Increase Our Effectiveness,” on strengthening both communications with external audiences and communications linkages with other groups inside the Access Network for greater collective influence. Josh Ulibarri, of Lake Research Partners, shared data from focus groups on how the public views public education and what kind of language works best.

David Sassoon, an independent communications consultant, addressed the need for intra-network communications and the untapped potential of network members’ working together for amplifying and improving our individual efforts. Sassoon recommended that network members consider using a popular digital medium called “blogs” as a way of communicating with one another on a regular basis, finding new audiences for our stories, and generating buzz about our cause.

Kip Voytek, senior vice president of Interaction Design at R/GA, gave conference participants a live tour of the “blogosphere” and demystified this medium for those new to it. Voytek discussed the advantages of this new medium, the most important of which is that it is a tool for “talking to people where they’re at” by creating a means of dialogue, rather than a barrage of information. Sassoon and Voytek recommend that Access Network members take advantage of blogging to start build the movement.